Disk swapping
Encyclopedia
Disk swapping refers to the practice of inserting and removing, or swapping, floppy disks in a floppy disk drive based computer system. In the early days of personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

s, before hard drives became commonplace, most fully outfitted computer systems had 2 floppy drives addressed as A: and B: on CP/M and MS-DOS. Disk drives were expensive, however, and having two was seen as a luxury by many computer users who had to make to with a single drive.

The purpose of 2 floppy drives was so that the disk containing the application
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...

 program could remain in the drive while the data disk containing the user's files could be accessed in the second drive. In order to use a function of the program not loaded into memory, the user would have to first remove the data disk, then insert the program disk. When the user then wanted to save their file, the reverse operation would have to be performed. On some less than user friendly
User Friendly
User Friendly is a discontinued daily webcomic about the staff of a small, fictional Internet service provider, Columbia Internet. The strip's humor tends to be centered around technology jokes and geek humour....

 systems, this could result in data loss
Data loss
Data loss is an error condition in information systems in which information is destroyed by failures or neglect in storage, transmission, or processing. Information systems implement backup and disaster recovery equipment and processes to prevent data loss or restore lost data.Data loss is...

 when, for example, files were saved onto the program disk.

Disk swapping was an infamous feature of early Macintosh 128k
Macintosh 128K
The Macintosh 128K machine, released as the "Apple Macintosh", was the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Its beige case contained a monitor and came with a keyboard and mouse. An indentation in the top of the case made it easier for the computer to be lifted and carried. It had a selling...

systems, which were extremely RAM starved.
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